Jesus Loves Me This I Know

June 17, 2001

 

 

What we learn earliest is what tends to stay with us our entire lives--almost no matter what. That's why Sunday School and Vacation Church may be the most important activity we have at this church.

I first learned this song as a five-year-old child at a Southern Baptist Church in Southern Texas--and, as I like to say, "it don't get no more southern than that!" My parents did not go to church at the time, so people next door took me for a number of months. I regret to say that I do not remember their names. But this song takes me back to my earliest encounter with Christianity and may well be responsible for me being your priest today.

But in looking for the words for this song on the Internet, I can across a dispiriting letter written by a man, now perhaps 70, who was also raised with the "Jesus loves me" song.

Here is part of his letter:

Yes, I was brought up as a Christian, and by good Christian people. I attended a summer bible school in Hunter, Oklahoma between the 1st and 2nd grades. We sang "Jesus Loves Me" every day.

Interestingly, forty-some years later, I still get this song in my head sometimes. And, yes, it drives me crazy. I remember the young woman who had our bible school class teaching us to sing that one. But I started questioning everything that I couldn't see. It was a bad year for myths. First Santa Claus, then the tooth fairy, then the easter bunny, then Jesus, then God. All bit the dust.

But I coped. No-one wanted a seven-year-old kid in Oklahoma questioning anything he was told. So I nodded my head and said my prayers when it was necessary. Then, a few years later, my sister, my brother and I were involved in a car accident. Linda was killed.

Losing my sister was "God's Will" and I shouldn't feel badly about it. That was the family party line. That was what these people really believed.There is no way I could reconcile this thinking with my nine-year-old brain. "God" was supposed to love the children, why would he kill them? They are weak, he is strong. He kills them.

But these people that I loved and respected were believing something that was so evidently contradictory that a nine-year-old kid knew they were wrong. But I went along.

It was a whole different story for my father. He knew what he believed, and it didn't work, whatever it was. He started down the road to alcoholism with a new relish, fueled by his daughters' death, a road ending with his own death.

While he was going through this process, I lived with my mother. You could never ask for a better person than my mother. A wonderful woman, and a good Christian. And to this day, my mother loves me, but she knows I'm going to Hell. 'Cause I don't believe the same way she does, not even close. But she hasn't given up on me yet...

Since my divorce, I haven't been to church (except with my mother, at her insistence) and I will never go again. I was an atheist, and that was that.

I think what we have here is an atheist who can't get the song "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know" out of his head all these years later. How sad and embittered this man seems and as a Christian community we can ache for him and, with his mother, wish him back--perhaps with St. Augustine, his heart will be restless until it is back in the bossom of the Creator.

Notice his mother has not given up on him yet. The little jewel of a song seems to be with him still, ministering to him in all his pain and disappointment.

There are a couple of ways to take this:

(a) we are the most credulous when young--that is to say, we believe whatever is served up and that tends to stay with us. I am sure we could find some social scientists who would confirm something like this.

(b) that the Holy Spirit works most readily with young person who, in fact, are most open to the love of God.

Our atheist has opted for explanation a. In fact, I have to tell you, a number of years ago I took a group of college age students, and I noticed a hymnal open. The song was "Buddha loves me this I know, for the Sutra tells me so"! So maybe he's on to something.

I am here to advocate for (b). It may well be that we learn Christianity best from the natural way children the world over take to it. In fact, perhaps it is not too strong to say that a church without children singing "Jesus Loves Me" is missing perhaps the most profound part of the faith.

For those interested in the background of "Jesus Loves Me," it originally appeared as a poem inside a novel, Say and Seal, which Anna Warner co-authored with her sister Susan. It was written about the same time that St. Mary's was formed as congregation. I would be hard pressed to express St. Paul's vaunted doctrine of justification by grace through faith in our lesson for today than with these words:

Jesus loves me when I'm good,

When I do the things I should.

Jeuss loves me when I'm bad,

Even though it makes him sad.

The love of Christ establishes the relationship no matter what; but our behavior still matters lest we disappoint the one we should be least incline to disappoint. That's the relationship of law and gospel that St. Paul was at pains to establish over many letters. Not bad for four lines of a simple hymn.

To help keep the wolf from the door, Susan and Anna started writing, and in time their books became quite popular. As a matter of fact, the book, Say and Seal, was eventually ranked second only to Uncle Tom's Cabin. While writing in earnest, Susan and Anna, who, by the way, never married, would spend their Sunday after-noons teaching Bible to the young Cadets at West Point. This they did first, at the Institute, then eventually, entertaining the Generals on the island. Maybe that's why in Say and Seal, Anna includes a story about a little boy, Johnny Fox, who is dying, and a Mr. Linden, who comforts Johnny with the poem that became the song that is loved 'round the world today.

The two sisters conducted Bible study classes for many years at West Point until Susan died in 1885. Anna continued the classes until she died at the age of 95. Her home was willed to the Academy and is now a national shrine.

When you arrive at the island, go up the path to the Warner home. You'll find it just the way it was when the only two civilians buried at West Point taught the Cadets on the front lawn. Go inside the house and up a narrow staircase to the second floor. Find the bedroom with the brightest colors - that's Anna's room.

At the foot of the bed, hung on the wall inside a glass-enclosed picture frame, you'll find a letter written in Chinese. The interpretation reads as a thank-you letter to Anna from a Chinese missionary. The thing she is most thankful for is the truth of Anna's hymn, which has reminded the world for the last 136 years that, "Jesus loves me! This I know."